LAS VEGAS >> This time, his right eye was narrowed, with a cut near the eyebrow, and his left eye didn’t look right either. He said his hands hurt, too.

He almost looked like he’d been in a fight.

“Getting hit isn’t cool,” Floyd Mayweather said.

Normally Mayweather walks out of the ring like he walks out of Clippers games. Happy, surrounded by huge people, and untouched.

Andre Berto didn’t let him relax Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. But he didn’t solve a puzzle that has sat there for 19 years, like jigsaw pieces on the coffee table.

Mayweather is putting those pieces back in the box. He said he was retiring. It felt like it.

“I just made it look so easy,” he said. “I’ve always been able to tell what fighters do well and what they don’t do well. Tonight, first round, I hit him with a jab. It was over. When I fought (Manny) Pacquiao, it was the first round and I got him with a right hand and I buzzed him, stunned him. It was over. I had to show him that, no, you can’t just come in here. It gets kind of hot.”

Mayweather even denied he’d ever had a difficult fight. His 2002 decision over Jose Luis Castillo was vigorously disputed, although he beat Castillo again eight months later. Maybe he forgot. He has 49 consecutive victories and championships in five weight classes.

His father and trainer, Floyd Sr., was also a boxer. He noticed that his son, in a stroller, was punching.

“Except he didn’t punch like a baby,” Senior said. “He was throwing punches like me. So I told everybody on the streets that he was going to be the best.”

He called himself the fighter “from the year 3000,” but he would have been right at home 50 years ago. Boxing prized the slick guys then. All that knowledge has dried up. Not every town has a thriving gym scene or a Golden Gloves framework, or trainers who learned from their trainers. It’s like trying to find a typewriter repairman.

“Floyd cons you,” Berto said. “He’s slippery. He’ll throw a combination and then start holding you. You can hear him breathing. He knows what he’s doing. At 38, for him to have that kind of speed and timing is unheard of.”

Badou Jack, the 168-pouner who wore down George Groves and defended his WBC title, is promoted by Mayweather and trains at his gym, in the strip mall across Interstate 15, near Chinatown. He notices that Mayweather never has problems with weight limits, never has off nights.

The real news was that Mayweather actually said he had enough money. There is nothing left to buy. He said he was originally motivated to be a “pay-per-view star,” and the three top PPV fights of alltime are Mayweather fights. But then he saw a Bentley and “that first Rolex with the diamonds.” That got him up in the mornings.

Sure, Mayweather’s obsession with the money can seem juvenile. It is also honest.

“People don’t want me to talk about the money, but what else would I talk about?” he said.

Every free agent ballplayer and every imperial college coach wants you to think they’re committed to teammates or to “the kids.” Somehow they always wind up with the highest bidder.

“I’ve made upwards of $800 million,” Mayweather said. “The young fighters, they want to make Mayweather’s money. They’ve got to have Mayweather’s commitment, too.”

He went back to 1996, when he turned pro and won 17 times in the next 24 months before he won his first title, over Genaro Hernandez.

“I took fights for $7,500, or $9,500,” he said. “I didn’t care. I knew when I got that title shot, the money would come. I’m always looking at the big picture.”

For 19 years and 49 wins, he was the picture, with a face that never changed. The cruelest game on earth, the one that put young Michael Zerafa on a stretcher Saturday afternoon, never laid a glove on him. Then Floyd Mayweather left everyone else the best parting gift: a lesson in leaving.

Three facts:

1. Floyd Mayweather won world titles in weight classes ranging from 126 to 154 pounds.

2. Mayweather’s first retirement came in 2008. He returned to beat Juan Manuel Marquez in 2009.